updated 09:55 pm EST, Fri November 12, 2010

New features, enhancements included

Apple today posted Build 4A225 of its forthcoming XCode 4, now shaping up as a significant upgrade for developers. This fifth preview version brings a number of new features, including independent and assistant editor panes with their own histories, independent and "tearable" tabs, new configurable alerts and more. The new preview build also enhances tab behavior, general preferences and editor views, among other changes.

Many of the changes reflect Apple's effort to streamline the product's single-window interface, including placing the new Split Pane command on the far right of the Jump Bar. An interesting point in the developer notes for the preview build note that one of XCode 4's major features, an error-correcting routine called Fix-it, is no longer supported for iOS application projects using the new project dialog. The default iOS compiler is now set to LLVM-GCC, which doesn't support Fix-it.

XCode 4 Preview 5 is available to registered ADC members through Apple's Dev Center.